governmentwikiaorg-20200215-history
Category talk:Structure
Meaning What do you mean by "structure"? Chadlupkes 17:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC) :Sorry Chad, this did not show up in my watched pages for reasons I do have not been able to figure out. :This category or its sub-categories collect together articles that capture the way the government or its bodies are organized. For example: by geography you can find articles that relate to the government at the level of geography that interests you. Or constitution collects together articles on constitions of different governments. departments collects together articles on government departments. :Typically articles found by these categories all deal with the constitution, organization or framework of the government and not its purpose or performance. --Anupam 15:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC) ::Category:Political geography was a child on non-existent Category:Administration, so I created the latter and put it under Government. Is administration significantly different from structure? --Jesdisciple (talk) 16:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC) Relationship to other medium-to-high-level categories (Five weeks, no reply to Chad's question. I can understand why we have not had a flood of contributors.) :Sorry, see my comment above. I think we should create a new forum for discussing community and contributions. --Anupam 15:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC) The category needs to have at least a sentence explaining what it is to contain. Its subcategories need the same sort of explanation. :Done- see Category:Structure --Anupam 15:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC) As I think I said or implied in the early days of my time here, the wiki may get unusably complicated if this sort of category contains every article that mentions "structure". It should be restricted to articles that deal only with structure. Maybe call them "subpages" but not necessarily using "/". Examples from a recently created stub Goa Transport Ministry could be Goa Transport Ministry: Structure or Goa Transport Ministry - Structure or Goa Transport Ministry: Structure or Structure of Goa Transport Ministry. :I think we have moved a long way on categorization. There will always be room to improve. See Forum:Giki Categories for further discussions on the practical use of categories. --Anupam 15:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC) Once the preferred style is settled (which may already have happened somewhere), there should be an encouragement for people to create stubs for such subpages as soon as they create the content page. A close parallel may be drawn with the Genealogy: Wiki's "create a page" page, worth a good look, maybe, particularly http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Starting_pages#Select_a_Template. The resulting "model" page could have a name such as Template:NewPage, and the "create page" box could be designed so that it gives people an almost blank page with the right headings, links to proposed subpages, and categories already in place, as the genealogy "templates" do. I may try to draft one. :That was what I had in mind early on- However I agree with Chad's earlier comments elsewhere that we should keep things simple. Each category page now allows to create articles and offers a tip to index your article there. Hopefully wikia will support the articletocategory.php extension that will automatically insert the category into the article page and make this tip unnecessary. Now the template (which for some reason is not being preloaded- need to check that) simply has commented help. --Anupam 15:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC) Robin Patterson 01:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC) The point Anupam, I think you may be missing the point. Category structures need to follow content. If we demand that people who want to create articles must follow a category structure that we have built without enough representation that the structure works by example, it will turn people off. I'm already confused and discouraged myself, so I'm focusing more on the Business Wikia and other places. I've been hoping to give you time to solidify your thoughts and provide some examples, but most of the articles that you have posted have been stubs or pages that seem to serve no other purpose than to illustrate the category. The structure is far too complicated to draw people in right now. Chadlupkes 15:54, 9 June 2007 (UTC) :Chad, I just had a look at w:c:Campaigns_Wikia:Category_policy and w:c:Campaigns_Wikia:Categories which is not much different: to make it appear as the first item in that category. :Every article and category should be in at least one category, except for Category:Campaigns Wikia, which is the root category. All categories should branch from the root category, and categories should not be placed into themselves. If you see an article without a category and don't know of a suitable one, please place a at the bottom, which will place it in the "category needed" category.}} :As this correctly points out articles should be placed in the correct category. The easiest way to help contributors to do that is to have a mechanism to create articles within a category rather than expect them to know the correct category name. The mediawiki extension "articletocategory.php" does exactly this- it inserts the category name into the new article so the contributor can focus on the contribution. :Like the Campaigns wiki, the Giki hierarchy of categories too are not closed but branch from the three main categories: structure, purpose or performance. Like "articletocategory.php" I would love to see a "subcategoryincategory.php" extension to allow contributors to insert a subcategory to a category. :Your contributions and simplification is always valued, please do continue to simplify as we go along. Perhaps you want to start a forum on simplification that would list a current complex process and alternate ways for simplifying? :I am sure there are lots of challenges for Seattle and Washington, as for other locations- there may be citizens groups and government bodies charged to address these challenges- there would be dozens of suggestions about these challenges. Can we somehow capture these? Can we get the groups involved in sharing them? Can the projects be listed? Can the budgets be added? All of these do not need to be more than a paragraph as long as they capture the essence- they should be conversation starters. :Can we make Giki into a dialog rather than voices or documentation? Can we make Giki into a practical day-to-day as well as a long-now] conversation? Can we have Giki focused on making a difference? :--Anupam 12:45, 10 June 2007 (UTC) Example Here's an example. Goa Transport Ministry. In my opinion, this should have a paragraph describing what the Ministry is in charge of, which I'm guessing is Transportation, who the leadership is and how they are appointed, how to contact the Ministry with questions or about problems, etc. The categories should be Goa and Transportation in India. The Departments and Mission categories are completely out of place, because every government agency is part of a Department, and every government agency has a Mission. Those two categories are meaningless to me in this context. Chadlupkes 16:01, 9 June 2007 (UTC) Most departments in government are "procedures", not missions. In 2003 a Gartner report talked about the next wave or reform in government will be mission-focused governance. It is still far away. Obviously, diverse departments may need to address a common mission- so I do agree to connecting departments together through a common mission category. It may be one way to make them mission aware as in practice the concerned department may not actually be mission focused at all! --Anupam 13:06, 10 June 2007 (UTC)